Should Have Done This Before ...

I had an old analog wind-up alarm clock, but it  disappeared during the move. I've been meaning to buy a new one, but it keeps slipping my mind.

I've been using an Amazon Echo Dot as my alarm clock.

Usually it's not an issue anyway -- I tend to wake up 15-30 minutes before the alarm goes off.

But this morning I didn't ... and Alexa seems to be experiencing  service disruptions in my area.

So I overslept by an hour.

Not a HUGE deal since I don't report to an employer on a time clock, but I had to skip my half-mile pre-dawn "become fully awake" walk and get directly to work.

Guess I'll just go ahead and buy a new alarm clock today.

Wordle 1741 Hint

Hint: If there's an occasion today, today's Wordle is appropriate to it.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: B

OK, Finally An Actual Similarity

As long-time readers know, I called out the "Russiagate" scam for what it was -- a pathetic attempt to find someone, anyone ... "hey, how about Russia, that will work!" ... other than Hillary Clinton to blame for Hillary Clinton's piss-poor 2016 presidential campaign and loss to Donald Trump -- from the beginning.

Over the time since, I've found comparisons (coming from the same corner) of Trump to Vladimir Putin to generally be real stretches and often outright fantasies.

But Daniel Larison's column at Eunomia this morning strikes me as an apt comparison -- other than that he doesn't make the comparison, just lays out a basis for it:

If the reported details [of Trump's 15-point proposal] are correct, the so-called plan includes many of the same unrealistic and maximalist demands that the administration has been making for the last year. It was based on the U.S. proposal from 2025 before the June war. It is hard to see why Iran would agree to such terms now when their government has more leverage than it had before.

Which, apart from the April 2022 "Istanbul draft" (despite rumors you may have heard about Boris Johnson "killing" it, it was amended by Zelenskyy for Ukraine, then publicly rejected by Lavrov on behalf of Russia before Johnson even arrived in Kyiv), very resembles Putin's proposals for ending the war in Ukraine:

"Give me everything I want, but have utterly failed to get with military force, and I pinky promise to  stop trying to take things with miitary force!"

To the extent that it's a similarity, though, I don't think Trump is copying Putin. He seems to be copying ... Trump. He has a long record of failing, then trying to crybully the world into pretending he succeeded.